Planned month-long Lagos power outage angers customers

Electricity consumers at the Ikeja axis of Lagos have expressed their anger after their service provider, Ikeja Electric Plc, announced a disruption of service between March 6 and April 4.

In a statement on Friday, the company said the power outage would affect residents of Ojodu, Magodo, Alausa, Oke Afa, Bolorunpelu, Egbe, Igando, Shasha, and Ipaja.

Other areas include Alimosho, Agege, Abesan, Ayetoro, Abule Taylor, Ogba, Ifako, Shomolu, Gbagada, Oworonshoki, Ogudu, Isheri Olowora, Berger, Anthony, Otta, and environs.

“This is due to the planned outage resulting from the maintenance work being carried out by the Transmission Company of Nigeria on its transformers at the Ikeja West Transmission Station,” the company said in the statement.

“For the duration of this exercise, Ikeja Electric will embark on load shedding in the affected areas to ensure equitable distribution of power supply.”

The company followed up the statement with a tweet on its official handle that it received an average of 412 megawatts from TCN for transmission to its customers.

Ikeja Electric‏ @IkejaElectric Mar 3

Dear Customer, We received an average load allocation of 412MW from TCN for distribution across our network.

The announcement angered customers who complained that electricity supply had always been erratic even before the TCN’s planned maintenance work.

“Disruption of service? But that’s already ongoing. There is hardly any supply in Ifako Gbagada anyway,” said Inyang Sami-Orungbe, a customer. “Current situation is about two hours a day of electricity supply.”

Odion Alasa said there would still be epileptic power supply after the maintenance work.

“A whole one month to do maintenance? What are you maintaining?”

Another customer, Eneh Nwankwo, said they had been experiencing disruption of services since February.

“As a matter of fact, I have not seen light for 26 days now and still counting, I’m talking about total blackout for 26 days now and nobody knows when we will see light again in my area.”

Some customers urged Ikeja Electric Plc to suspend billing during the period the maintenance work is going on.

Ephraim Archie said electricity supply to his area has been “nonexistent.”

“As far as we know, the whole community is in darkness yet we are served bills. God help you guys you bring bill to my house.”

Jimoh Olatunbosu said his area in Idimu had been without power for months but they had continued to receive electricity bills from the company.

“Please don’t serve us bill again at Idimu because we don’t use to have light at all.”